I find my swimsuit and towel and go outside to wait in the garden. The grass is short and dry, yellow in patches, and there are croquet hoops stuck in the ground here and there, I almost trip over one. The cherry trees droop with dense clusters of unripe fruit, a pale reddish-yellow in colour. I pluck a few and stick them in my mouth, they taste sour, I spit out the stones, firing them as far as I can into the air. Kristoffer is busy trying to hang the hammock up between two pine trees. He looks different now, he was Kristoffer in the car, now he’s the father of Marthe’s baby, a grown-up.

‘Congratulations are in order, I hear,’ I say.

‘Thanks,’ he replies. ‘I wasn’t sure I was allowed to say anything in the car.’

‘Lovely news,’ I say.

‘Why are you saying congratulations?’ Olea asks, she’s sitting and heaving her weight back and forth in the swing in an attempt to pick up speed.

‘Because Marthe and Kristoffer are going to have a baby,’ I say.

‘Oh, that,’ Olea says, sounding disappointed.

I stand behind her and pull the swing back before letting her go. 27

‘Higher,’ she says over and over again, ‘higher, higher,’ and eventually she’s happy with the speed she’s picked up and giggles as she reaches the highest point of each swing.

‘Look at me, Daddy,’ she shouts, looking back at Kristoffer, ‘look at how high up I am!’

‘I can see that,’ Kristoffer says, as he ties the second hammock tightly around a tree trunk. He sits and tests it under his weight, he hasn’t tied it tightly enough and his bum sinks to the ground below. We laugh. Olea flies back and forth with the wind in her hair as her legs dangle below her, her mouth half-open, I recall the feeling in your stomach when you reach the highest point, the swing dropping from the sky and swooping down, so totally and utterly in flight that you almost believe that you might soar up, up and away, then the way the ground hits you when you land, always surprisingly solid.

Kristoffer wraps the fabric of the hammock around himself, as if he were inside a cocoon.

‘Do you think Marthe will see him when she comes out?’ I ask Olea.

‘No,’ Olea replies.

‘Kristoffer,’ Marthe shouts from inside, as if on cue, then she comes out onto the decking and shouts again. ‘Kristoffer?’

‘Don’t say anything,’ I mumble, and Kristoffer giggles inside the sausage-shaped hammock.

‘Have you seen him?’ Marthe asks me, swaying from side to side and stroking her belly.

‘No, I don’t know where he is,’ I say loudly, and Kristoffer starts shaking with laughter inside his cocoon. Olea giggles on the swing. 28

‘Come on,’ Marthe says, standing with her arms by her sides. ‘I’m not in the mood for games.’